2.5⭐️s. I guess I had expected more related to the witch trials for this book based on the blurb and marketing. Instead it was more about Alice living in medieval Ireland with all the corruption, violence and brutality of the time, dealing with people who wanted to take advantage of her or were jealous of her and how she navigated her ambition against that. The witch hunt focus wasn’t until the very end, and sort of glossed over quickly.

The story itself wasn’t bad at all, just again, not what I expected or anticipated. It also had a sort of poetic quality more than a character-development focus, so it was a little atypical in the way the story flowed. The book worked thru how cunning Alice was, what circumstances she was dealt, as well as how utterly and shockingly foolish her character judgement and poor choice was in men.

Ultimately I just didn’t like any of the characters. I think I would have been ok with the rest of it if not for that. They were all just awful people, either violent and cruel, self serving and vengeful, outside of the brief bits of husband #3, Richard De Valle.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are mine.

The book starts out with Alice, a motherless girl. Her father is a lender and also an innkeeper. It soon becomes apparent that there is a problem in their relationship as she is half terrified and half devoted to him. This has turned her bitterness towards men but she needs their devotion to live. Like her father, Alice becomes a lender and innkeeper. She marries for money and in the desire to beget children--wanting to extend her value, her kingdom. The book is lyrical, almost poetic in its writing. The novel is not well-defined, almost as if the events are inferred rather than described. She angers many powerful people and, because of this, comes under suspicion of witchcraft. The chapters are divided by conversations, gossip about Alice that are not attributed to anyone, but let the reader know how the community thinks of Alice. I was not only captured by the story but also by the writing style. I received a complimentary digital ARC from Knopf and NetGalley. This honest review is my own words and opinion.

I was really excited for this one, and while it did have some great things happening, overall, it was a miss for me. The timeline was so jumpy. The author did label the chapters by date, but if you (like me) are bad at numbers and dates, then that will all go right over your head, and you will be lost most of the time. I felt like years went by with no indication that it had happened except that the characters were older all of a sudden. While the book had some great things to say about the way that society treated women who didn't conform to the norm, there are other books that do this in a more reader friendly way. I did like the main character and her POV, but the book just lost me much of the time. Maybe this won't be a problem for people who struggle with numbers, but it really made the reading experience disjointed for me.

The summary of this novel sounded really interesting. However, the execution left me wanting. I DNFed at 27%. I like Alice as a character and wanted to get to know her. The prose however often me confused about what was happening. There was also jarring ends to most scenes and lots of time jumps, sometimes a couple years in time, that left me grasping at straws. At one point Alice gets sent to a convent and we get maybe 2 scenes there and then there's a time jump to a couple of years later and she's back home playing with her son.

I love the concept, but I wanted more from Alice's story. I think some people will like this book, but I couldn't finish it.

Review going live September 19

This was a historical fiction retelling and reimagining the life of Alice Kyteler, the first woman to be persecuted as a witch in Ireland. I was incredibly excited to get an eARC of this because I had done some research into wise women in medieval Ireland and Britain for a course during my MA studies, but this just fell incredibly flat for me. 😔

Alice as a character was flat, rather one dimensional, and didn’t really go through any character development. I was almost bored by her at times and I feel horrible for saying this because I really wanted to like her and her desire to rule her life by her standards. Her apathy towards other villagers, while described as a need for self-preservation, just felt cold in general. I was also not particularly happy that Aitken teased a sapphic love between Alice and her servant that took her place on the pyre, Petronilla de Meath, and then never did anything with it. 😡

The time jumps in this short book felt stunted and rushed. The reader never gets a sense of Alice as a character and narrator because of this, and you end up as apathetic towards her as she is towards others. In all honesty, I would rather have stuck with Petronilla as a MC instead because she stood out more on the page than Alice did. 😬

The last thing thing that I didn’t particularly like was that Aitken makes all these links to wise women and their ways, especially the connection to the lynxes of Ireland (which, also why would she claim the Romans hunted them while they were there, which is also weird because Rome never conquered Ireland!), but then never once goes into detail about how Alice learned how to make homeopathic remedies. 🫨

All in all, I’m just left rather stumped. I felt like nothing happened in the plot and there were so many missed opportunities to really make this book shine. Big thank you goes out Canongate Books, Knopf, and NetGalley for accepting my request to read this in exchange for an honest review. I really wanted to like this. 🥲

Publication date: September 10

Overall: 1.5/5 ⭐️

This book had good writing that seemed to lean more literary. I thought that this fit the character-driven nature of the book, but did sometimes make it difficult to feel fully settled into the story. I appreciated the short chapters and found the different types of chapters interesting — I thought it made the book really readable and feel fast paced. Alice felt like a very dynamic, strong-voiced — if often frustrating - main character. All in all, it was an interesting glimpse it history I was previously unfamiliar with.

This was fiction but based on Alice Kyteler-
In 13th century Ireland, Alice was the first woman to be condemned as a witch.
She was a strong and successful businesswoman which was unusual. The story seemed to focus on how she acquired each of her four husbands and how they all conveniently died.
And she really was not a likeable character.
I enjoyed the book but was hoping for a bit more..
Thanks to Net Galley and Knopf for an early read.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book as much as I was hoping I would. The characters felt very undeveloped, and the plot was confusing. I liked the premise but the book was confusing and convoluted at times, which made it less enjoyable. Great idea, not so great execution.

Alice Kyteler is yet another woman from history who we would never have heard of if it hadn't been for an overly zealous, supposedly pious man accusing her of witchcraft and trying to burn her at the stake. Molly Aitken imagines Alice's life as the child of a wealthy innkeeper who watches her mother struggle under the auspices of women's work and vows never to become like her. Alice is ambitious and turns her father's wealth into a great fortune, but her many husbands' deaths haven't been unnoticed by her community and the church. Rumors spread rapidly and Alice is torn between staying and fighting or running for her life.

This book starts rather well and then tends to get a bit confusing. I liked the tone and thought the story was interesting but every now and then it meandered a bit and I found myself wondering what was going on.

Thank you Netgalley for providing an ARC for review.

Bright I Burn by Molly Aitken is meant to be a story about a woman being accused of witchcraft and her journey to garner such accusations. In reality, the story follows the life of Alice Kyteler as she grows from a young girl into the end of her life. Bright I Burn is difficult to follow at first, because of the short chapters, varying writing styles and time jumps. However, Aitken does a wonderful job of progressing the story and making the reader feel as though they are swimming through Kyteler's mind.

I didn’t care for the writing style of this book. It felt very surface-level. The characters didn’t feel well developed.

DNF @ 24%

I was given an advance reading copy (arc) of this book from NetGalley.com in return for a fair review. The story takes place in thirteenth century Ireland and is based on the life of a real woman. I found the story to be choppy and hard to follow. There seemed to be a lot of unnecessary poems and quotes that only confused/interrupted the story. From what I could gather, this woman, Alice, murdered her husbands, mostly for her own gain. The one surviving child she had was a son who in later years distanced himself from her only to return when money was involved. She was not likeable and what could have been a really interesting story left me disappointed. I had no feel for the time or setting, just disjointed scenes that never really came together for me. Maybe another reader will feel differently, but I was not impressed.

This is an odd book, but one I still thoroughly enjoyed. It is a fast read and an emotional one. I would recommend it to people looking for a quick, unique story.

The book follows a beautiful young woman in thirteenth century Ireland whose father refuses to accept a marriage proposal for her. When he dies, she takes over her father's lending business and finds a man to marry because she knows she won't be taken seriously as a business woman without a husband. We follow her through several unsatisfying relationships over decades and see how life hardens her.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for my review.

This is definitely a book that has a lot of my interests included. The writing is unique and the formatting of the book is interesting. I loved the pieces of gossip from the town that were thrown in before a chapter change.

The story is a fictionalized history of a woman who really did exist and it made me want to do some Wikipedia deep diving. Her narration was so strong and, though not necessarily likeable as a character, you can really feel her drive and passion to be more than just a wife or a mother. To be powerful and rich as well.

I enjoyed the reading of this book, however, I will say that it is not by any means a light read. It is pretty heavy all the way through and I highly suggest checking trigger warnings before starting.

Overall, I think this was a strong story and I look forward to what Aitken does next.

This is my first book by Molly Aitken. I had never heard of Alice Kyteler before this book. I think most people are fascinated by the Salem Witch trials and the awful way women were treated for being different in those times. This book tells the story of Alice who was the first person in Ireland to be charged with Witchcraft. Alice is a very strong, feministic character and you aren't sure if you love or hate her. She is very powerful and strong and I can see how that would be mistaken for evil in those times. She doesn't fare well with husbands, that's for sure.

Molly Aitken was born in Scotland and raised in Ireland, her ongoing fascination with Celtic myth and history informs this vivid reimagining of the life of Alice Kyteler, the first woman in Ireland to be condemned for witchcraft. Set in Ireland during the 13th century, it's mainly presented from Alice's perspective, interspersed by a chorus of townspeople's voices. Alice lives in the monastic town of Kilkenny where her father's position as innkeeper and moneylender has set her family apart, both envied and despised. When her father dies Alice's forced to marry in order to take over his business, but the marriage ends in disaster, like the others that follow.
Aitken's beautifully-observed narrative's lyrical but never sentimental. Aitken uses Alice's experiences to explore the plight of powerful, ambitious women in an era of misogyny, where a woman could be lawfully killed if suspected of adultery. It's a medieval society caught between the old ways
- in which witches and cunning folk were an acceptable feature - and rising forces within the Catholic church, resulting in clashes between the secular and the religious.
Aitken brings in hints of Salem with her references to local bakeries' mould-ridden bread known to provoke mania and delusions. But, unlike conventional stories of witchcraft and persecution, Alice isn't portrayed as a blameless victim of patriarchy. Instead, she's a far more complex figure, often far from likeable: her scheming and morally dubious actions stemming from her desperation to find some way of navigating the spaces between personal, bodily desires and what's expected of a woman and a wife, it's a refreshing perspective. Although there were moments when my attention wandered, I found this a surprisingly compulsive, Haunting piece

I was really intrigued by the concept of this book, a story about the first woman accused of being a witch in Ireland! While I enjoyed the book, I was left with mixed feelings. It was quite difficult to follow the speaker throughout the book, never knowing true events from the gossips and whispers around town. I think some of this could be fixed with proper formatting in a finalized edition. There also wasn’t a very smooth narrative, it was very eccentric just like the main character, but the topic of witches was never really addressed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for this arc!
3 ⭐️

Bright I Burn by Molly Aitken is a historical fiction novel set in 13th century Ireland. The story of Alice is complicated, she had aspirations to be independent and successful as a business woman in a time period that did not allow women to make their own decisions. Her greatest downfall was how she was perceived and accused which could be anything a man wanted to contrive without evidence.

This book was not for me, I found Alice’s life to be a consequence of her actions. She was promiscuous, her husbands die under unusual circumstances, she was quite vindictive and cruel to people around her. Ultimately, her maid pays the price for her discretions. She gave people reason to talk badly about her with her behavior and reputation. This novel does give an accurate view of a woman’s life in medieval Ireland, the struggles of women to be safe, to give birth and raise children, and to have a say in their lives.

I will decline sharing my review on my social media accounts due to my rating.

Thank you Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. All opinions are my own.

It’s a huge bonus especially for women to have wealth no matter what year it is.

This book is based on the true story of Alice Kyteler. It takes us back to a very long time ago; the year is 1279. After her father died in Kilkenny, Ireland, she inherited the ownership of his profitable inn. It gave her a good living but she constantly had her eye on getting more coins and doing whatever she needed to aim high in her life with four marriages and one son.

This book opened up my eyes to this woman’s life and what a struggle it must have been. Each husband called her “wife.” Women had to obey and yet, Alice had a way of getting whatever she wanted. The setting took us to a place where there was a great fear of war with the Gaels. Women needed protection from a man. Yet, Alice wasn’t afraid of walking alone.

Alice wasn’t someone I liked. I wouldn’t want to put her on my friend’s list with an attitude of importance and ongoing goal of reaching more riches. Women with successful husbands had to be nervous of her presence.

At times, I was confused about what was happening wondering if I may have missed something. It helped me to read accounts on Google to get more background of her life. I wish there was more in the book about how Alice was accused of using dark magic. She knew that to have control with her life she needed money and powerful friends. Not all women were as fortunate especially servants. It made me think about women’s rights of today. Maybe there’s not a trial of witchcraft these days but money sure helps with any legal situation.

My thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for allowing me to read an early copy of this book with an expected release date of September 10, 2024.